In this classic novel that still resonates today, Vonnegut
introduces us to the hapless Billy Pilgrim, stuck in the misery of
the Second World War, a tragi-comic hero belittled and abused by
his soldier colleagues as they retreat behind enemy lines. Unarmed,
in a daze of misery, hunger and exhaustion, Billy stumbles
alongside the obnoxious Roland Weary as he relates his knowledge of
torture methods. Just as it seems that Billy's ordeal can get no
worse, he is captured by the Germans and force-marched to a prison
camp. It is at this point that his brain decides to take a holiday
and he becomes Billy Pilgrim, time traveller. As the theatre of war
enacts its ghastly tableaux against a backdrop of brutality and
death, Billy tumbles in and out of his life, as it was, as it is,
as it will be. Billy sees himself as a child, a newly wed on
honeymoon, the only survivor of a plane crash, and a zoological
specimen on the planet Tralfamadore. War-time Billy is taken to
Dresden, there to work as a POW, sleeping in 'Slaughterhouse 5' in
a city unaware of its soon-to-be-notorious fate. Already unhinged
by the diabolical acts of cruelty that mankind seems capable of
inflicting on itself, he is witness to the destruction of Dresden
before being sent home to resume life as normal. Billy continues to
stumble through an existence he doesn't seem to want or enjoy,
until the moment comes when he tell the world that death is merely
another dimension - the aliens who kidnapped him have told him so.
Vonnegut's deadly humour and caustic observations on a war he
himself participated in reveal its lunacy, as humans become units
of cruelty, driven only by the will to survive. Billy Pilgrim,
helpless in a world he does not understand, is a powerful
protagonist in this masterpiece of American writing. (Kirkus UK)
An anti-war novel in which Billy Pilgrim, prisoner of war, optometrist and time-traveller is the hero. This is a story of innocence faced with apocalypse.
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